Targan Fraser's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

The boy sat on the top course of the stone pen and blew the pipe in slow turns. The four hatchlings lay in the dirt below him, eyes half shut. Targan watched the boy's chest rise and fall and knew the count was wrong. One boy. Four dragons. No riders chosen but the boy himself and Targan's old man on the black hatchling inside the hall. He had until the boy's wind gave out to find four more. He pulled a glass vial from his belt. A druid had pressed it into his hand at the last fair and told him it would dim with every breath a piper spent. The liquid inside glowed soft orange. He held it up against the morning. It was already a finger lower than at dawn. He corked it and shouted for his men to build. They dragged timber from the woodpile and raised a scaffold beside the pen, four legs sunk and braced, a plank floor at the height of the wall. The boy climbed down from the stones and up onto the platform. From there he could see every hatchling and they could see him. He blew again. The vial dimmed another thread. Targan set it on a post where he could watch it without turning his head. While the men worked, Targan walked to the edge of the field and drove posts into the soft ground. He strung rope between them in a wide square open at one end, the way a man pens cattle he means to sort. He hung a small bronze bell on the gatepost. Then he sent two riders out on horse with word to every household within a half day's ride. Bring your sons. Bring your daughters. Ring the bell at the rope and stand inside it if you would try. They came before noon. A smith's girl with burnt hands. Two cousins from the upper farms. A widow's son who had never sat a horse. A herder no older than the boy on the scaffold. The bell rang and rang and would not stop ringing once struck, a clear tone that carried over the field and pulled more feet toward it. By the time the sun stood overhead, eleven stood inside the rope. Targan walked the line and looked at each one. He picked four. He did not pick the ones he would have picked at twenty. He picked the ones the hatchlings might suffer. He led the four to the carved poles at the field's edge and set each one's hand on the mark cut for them. Then he turned to the pen. The vial on the post had dropped to half. The boy on the scaffold met his eye and blew again. Targan opened the gate of the pen and waved his four chosen forward. The hatchlings lifted their heads. The bonding would start now, breath by breath, while any breath was left.